Waxing Poetics Going After The Big One

Sound Check

June 16, 1989|By JOSEPH PRYWELLER Staff Writer

The Waxing Poetics, one of this area's most successful rock bands, might be close to landing a major record contract.

The Norfolk-based group has released two LPs on the small Emergo Records label, the latest being last year's well-received "Mannakin Moon." The band members just returned from a four-month tour of clubs in the Midwest and Southeast, where they played to an odd mixture of large crowds and empty houses.

Now the band might be further cultivating its blue-eyed soul. The members are in Chapel Hill, N.C., to record a demo tape of new material. A major record company is interested in how the Poetics wax on tape, according to manager Carol Taylor.

The finished product is expected out in July. If a major label doesn't bite, the demo could turn into a third album for Emergo.

The band, together five years, will have to make it without bass player Sean Hennessy. He left the group after the Poetics' coming-home gig in May at Norfolk's Boathouse. Hennessy wants to pursue a career in photography. Jeff Bailey, formerly of The Boweevils, is filling for the demo tape.

The Poetics played a blistering homecoming concert at The Boathouse, opening with a Ray Charles hymnal, "Midnight Hour," and ending with "Mannakin Moon," an acoustic number that, curiously, didn't show up on the album of the same name.

Lead singer David Middleton contrasted his baby-face looks with an evil-eyed glance that bordered on the psychotic. It kept the proceedings interesting for the near-sellout crowd.

* Walk on, walk on. Williamsburg resident Bruce Hornsby expands his musical repertoire on the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band's new bluegrass compilation, "Will the Circle Be Unbroken, Vol. II." Hornsby sings a bluegrass version of his song "The Valley Road," with guitar pickin' by Randy Scruggs, son of the late bluegrass guitar man Earl Scruggs.

Hornsby also contributed vocals to a cut on Stevie Nicks' latest album, "The Other Side of the Mirror," and co-wrote a song with ex-Eagle Don Henley that will appear on Henley's LP due out this summer.